


Won't Hurt A Bit

by APgeeksout



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Community: hc_bingo, Implied/Referenced Vivisection, M/M, Multi, POV Second Person, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 00:45:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12377484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: "Because death in the Fifth City is often transitory, there is a shortage of corpses upon which surgeons can practise their trade. Instead, they rely upon brave volunteers capable of lying very, very still."Failing that, they can always call upon Dean Ambrose.





	Won't Hurt A Bit

**Author's Note:**

> For the "Self-Harm" square on my round 8 Hurt/Comfort Bingo card. 
> 
> If you're ever in the Neath, feel free to look me up, delicious friend; I play Fallen London as [Applesauce Parker](http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Applesauce%20Parker), Glassman and Zubmarine-enthusiast, open to all in-game social actions. ♥

"A remarkable specimen, as always, Mr. Ambrose. The students find it especially illuminating to hear you recount the provenance of each wound."

You chuckle and start doing up the buttons of your shirt with fingers that are still clumsy and shaking, while he rinses the last traces of your blood from his hands and starts weighing out your payment with a small brass scale on the top of his desk. 

"Rather hear myself talk than you work," you say. Whatever else happens after you lay yourself down on the examining table, you always find yourself rambling about this beating or that dirty fight to drown out the wet squelches and grinding crunches and other noises that inevitably follow you into your dreams.

"Quite," he says. The jade chips clink cheerily as he transfers them from the scale into a drawstring pouch. "I hope we may call on your services again in a fortnight?"

"That's a long way away, Doc. Can't promise I'll still be in one piece by then."

"Well, think it over, then." He produces a bottle from one of the desk drawers, raises it to you in a weird little toast, and lines it up alongside the pouch. "I'm sure we can arrange with the Fellows to increase your honorarium, if that's a factor."

You hoist yourself down from the exam table, collect your wares, tear the bottle's cork out with your teeth, and slouch out of the lecture hall, all without saying a thing that might give away to him that you'd do this for free.

On the street, peddlers and pickpockets and social reformers all shrink out of your path as you lurch out of the shadow of the imposing edifice of the medical college; you're limping and cursing, and most of the bloodstain on your suit is your own, for a change.

You take a fortifying swig from the bottle. It's rough wine, sharp and earthy, more than a hint of mushroom in the afterbite, but it's doing the trick of keeping you in your boots for now. 

You nestle the small purse of jade inside one of the inner pockets of your jacket - safe from light fingers - and make your way down the broken cobbles. As you walk, you hitch your shoulder, the one that won't set quite right even after the rest of today's wounds mend themselves, trying in vain to stretch its fibers and ward off its dull aches. Maybe, paired up with the wine bottle in your other hand, it looks a little like a dance step, because a red-stockinged girl trips off the front stoop of a disrepaired Parlor of Virtue to sidle up beside you and offer to help you practice some new moves from the Elder Continent.

"Sorry, Charles, but I think his dance card's full tonight." The voice comes from behind you, and you watch her eyes travel up and down the shape of its owner before he steps up to your side.

An anarchist's sable swirls dramatically around him as he comes to a stop, and the bleached section of his hair is a shining silver in the moonish light. They've taken to calling him The Venturesome Architect, in whispered hints and intriguing snipppets all over town, but he's still just Seth to you.

"I'm sure we could find a way to keep busy, all three," she offers, eyeing you both up speculatively while Seth's hand edges inside your vest to find the spot over your heart where the good doctor's incision is still seeping, just a little.

"Rain check," you say, smiling crookedly, even though you both know how rarely there's any weather down here.

"Your loss." She shrugs. Before she sways off back to her post, you hold the rest of the bottle out to her, and as she takes it, she leans up to press a kiss to your cheek; you're pretty sure you got the best of that exchange by a long shot. 

"You're pale," Seth scolds, his fingers coming away from your chest tacky with blood as you get moving again.

"No sunlight; everybody's pale." You shrug, and he scowls.

"You donated your body to science again, didn't you?" He sounds annoyed - which you don't mind; sometimes you even bring that out of him on purpose - but there's also an edge of something else in his voice.

"Those classes you've been taking with the Implacable Detective are really paying off, huh?" you say, flip as you can muster to spare you both from having to acknowledge the fear or despair or whatever it is he's working himself up into over you and a little bit of bright, fleeting pain.

"There are better, easier sources of jade," he says, undeterred, and takes a fistful of your jacket to reel you in closer to his side and stop your path from weaving into the gutter. "The Gracious Widow even thinks you're charming."

"Got her fooled," you agree, and sling an arm over his shoulder, letting him take some of your weight as you draw nearer the waterfront and begin threading a path between massive piles of strange cargo and crews of industrious Clay Men.

"I just don't understand why you keep doing this to yourself," Seth continues, looking grimly at the rusty smear of your blood still clinging to his fingertips.

"Well, I mean, it's all the doc's show. Like, technically, I _don't_ do it myself." You tug a relatively clean handkerchief out of your pocket and scrub it over his stained fingers with your free hand.

"Technically?" He sounds bitter, but lets it break off into a resigned little laugh. "You're impossible."

"'Impossible'," you echo. "I don't hate the sound of that. Think we could get them to start using that instead of 'Lunatic?'"

You keep both your body and the conversation moving, and Seth shepherds you away from the betting on the quayside (even though you have a pocket full of jade and a score to settle with the old salt running the dice game), and before you know it, you're back at the moorings of the _SS Philadelphia_.

The decommissioned steamer is a wreck, but it takes one to know one, and she's the closest thing you've found to a home in this world. Most nights, the wind howls around the ship's salt-crusted bulk like a lonesome marshwolf, and it's hard to chase out the chill inside, but Roman likes being near the water, and you and Seth like being near Roman.

When you part the heavy curtains that help keep the warmth of the living quarters from dissipating over the open deck or into the yawning cargo spaces, you find him already inside, spreading a glistening array of glim out to dry on the top of a workbench lit with flickering greenish candlelight. His sleeves are rolled up past his elbows, and you take the opportunity to admire his tattoo: the library of family secrets traced onto his skin, an alphabet of lines and shadings and loving details that you're slowly learning to read. 

"Good haul?" you ask.

"Good enough. Not as good as my boys being home." He smiles up at you both, but it falters a little as he takes in Seth's sturdy grip on you, the clammy sweat that's broken out on your face. 

" _Somebody_ went back to the medical school today," Seth says tiredly. 

"Tattletale," you grumble.

Seth huffs and lets you loose; you reel a little without the support and try to disguise it with a graceless flop onto the mound of sail canvas and surface silk and other bits of cloth you've all built together into a bed big enough to share. It's not altogether successful, if the look Seth and Roman are trading when you glance back up at them is anything to go by. 

Even though he's got to be tired of your bullshit already, Seth settles down beside you and tugs off your boots. You let the both of you pretend that he's only worried about how much sand and mud you might get in the bed. 

"Get out of that coat, babe," Roman says, leaning down to pluck at your sleeve. 

You look down at the fabric, stiff with dried blood, and find that you don't have it in you to protest, even though it takes more than you want to admit to sit up and shrug out of it and the gory layers underneath. The incisions have already healed back up, though the skin is tender and pink. Roman brushes careful fingertips over your bare shoulder, tracing the arc of an old slice renewed by the surgeon's scalpel, and you can't suppress the shudder that rolls down your spine. Not any more than Seth and Roman can hide their mournful expressions over it. 

Seth reaches into his satchel and dumps a puddle of rich black material onto your lap. It's on your lips to tease him about exactly what kind of swap he made with Mathilde, when you realize that the edges are finished. These aren't scraps; it's a Shroud of Little Midnights. More than one, by the feel of it. 

"For real?" you sputter, even as Seth drapes a fold of the fabric over your shoulders, heedless of the crust of dried blood you're sure to leave behind in its delicate weave. "You're giving me shit about my extracurriculars when you've been playing Knife and Candle without backup?"

"Not the same thing, and you know it," he says defensively.

And he's got you there: if they weren't so different, you might not need the doctor's knives and chisels and clamps. If you weren't so different, the slick, sudden glide of a Knife of Lost Sky between your ribs might be enough to mute the static in your head. 

"You're just afraid I'm gonna win the Boatman's chess game before you get another crack at him," you say, instead of anything confessional. 

Seth frowns and collects your clothes, emptying the pockets of jade and brass, a few loose venom rubies and a lump of sticky beeswax, a set of kifers and a penny dreadful about Jack of Smiles before he dunks them in a pail of zeewater to soak. They're probably beyond salvage, but if there's some way to make them useful again, Seth'll be the one to find it. 

Roman ruffles his hand through your hair, gives it a gentler tug than you probably deserve before he reaches into the pocket over his heart and pulls out a morsel of spore toffee. "Don't know that I ought to reward you for being so careless with something I care about," he starts, untwisting the ends of the wax-paper wrapper as he speaks, "but I still wanna give you something sweet." 

Your mouth waters, and a lump rises in your throat, larger and more sudden even than the one that always comes up just before the surgeon's blade sinks in to the flesh above your sternum. He presses the lump of candy past your lips and you let it settle on your tongue, melting rich and buttery, and you'd almost swear you feel some of the broken things inside your chest start to knit back together as it dissolves past the thickness in your throat. 

He strokes the hair back from your temple and rises to throw another chunk of driftwood into the stove. The fire crackles, and the thirsty bombazine of the shroud eats up its light and draws its heat into your bones along with it. You scoot back further, propping yourself up against a stack of makeshift pillows. You feel a little like a ginger tomcat with a scrap of fishmeat and a square of newsprint: cozy and dozy and apt to spill all your secrets. Your eyelids are heavy when Seth comes back to your side and curls your fingers around the sides of a stone mug. 

"Drink deep," he says, his hand squeezing yours around the mug. You ignore the measure of wine in your cup and lean up to steal a kiss instead. He kisses you back, and there's less anger in it than you expected, maybe hoped for.

"I'm okay," you say when you part. "Really. I've been doing dumb shit since way before there was anybody around to care, and I'm still kicking. Don't worry about me so much. 'All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well'," you say softly. It feels like the thing to say, even though you're not sure who you're parroting. 

He tips his forehead to lean against yours. "Or, you could just not let them take you apart for kicks?" 

You don't say anything. You won't be able to explain that it's not fun that drives you back to the anatomy lesson and you don't know how to say that it's never him or Roman that you mean to hurt with it and you know better than to promise it won't happen again. You gotta hope not bullshitting about it for once will be enough for now. 

He sighs and kisses your cheek before he leans back. "Seriously, you want to drink your wine." He squeezes your hand again. "It's the good stuff, from the Masters' cellars."

You raise the glass in a cheesy enough toast to drag a smile out of him, and another out of Roman where he leans against the galley counter, watching over you with his own mug in hand and Seth's at his elbow. You take a sip, and it _is_ the good stuff, smooth and heady. You can practically feel it filing down the teeth of your nightmares. 

Seth skims a hand down your leg on the way back to claim his own mug. You wipe out your glass in a few deep swallows while your boys talk softly in the galley. You're fading too fast to really follow the words, but you can hear the note of strain in Seth's voice and Roman's answers, deep and steady. You don't even need to pry your eyes open to see the way Seth leans into him, one arm locked around Roman's neck. You breathe a little easier when he finally makes Seth laugh, not loud and not for long, but the nasally one that means he's not faking or forcing it. 

Between the wine and the warmth, the company and the toll time collects for putting your body back to rights, you're already on the fringes of a dream - bats wheel above you, chirping like sparrows; thick grass bruises sweet-smelling under your bare feet - when careful hands lift the empty cup from your lax grip and draw another blanket over you. 

Seth curls up against you and rests his head over your heart, as though he doesn't trust it to keep time without careful monitoring. Roman stretches out along your other side and drapes his arm over you both.

Your breath leaves you in a sigh and your hand meets Roman's in Seth's hair. He must guess that you're not fully in the dream yet, or just hope that his voice will carry to you even there, because he murmurs into the crook of your neck, "Next time you need to feel something real, you come to us, not Doctor Frankenstein."


End file.
